SEDUCTIVE SUPERNATURALS: 12 Tales of Shapeshifters, Vampires & Sexy Spirits (23 page)

Goose bumps covered every inch of Gracie’s body. Who didn’t stay dead? Who was Aiken? What was he talking about? Michael’s voice rose and fell, becoming more strained as he spoke.

“She’s in the Diablo now,” he said. “She doesn’t think of Ella anymore. She’s forgotten that he didn’t stay dead. Business is good.” A strange smile curved his lips. “Oh,” he said. “She has famous guests. Eleanor Roosevelt is here. She’s thinking that the president’s wife is sleeping in a room once used by prostitutes, and it makes her laugh.” The smile dimmed. “There’s a man now. His name is Jimmy, and she likes him. He wants to marry her. She is happy. Happier than she’s ever been. He tells her about another place . . .”

Michael paused. Gracie could see his eyes moving beneath his closed lids. It was like REM, only he wasn’t asleep. He still held her hand, his fingers warm and dry.

“Glenwood Springs,” he said triumphantly. “He tells her about Glenwood Springs and how business is booming there. He wants to expand. He wants to make the Diablo like that. There’s to be a wedding . . . and a baby. Jimmy’s baby. She’s so happy. Happy. She’s making wedding plans . . . but . . .”

His pause stretched, and Gracie waited impatiently, wanting to press him but knowing it would do no good.

“Chloe is here now.”

At first she thought he meant Chloe was in the room with them, and she glanced over her shoulder, expecting to see the old woman. But then he began speaking again.

“She’s come to warn Carolina. She . . . Chloe says there’s a curse and a man who didn’t stay dead. There’s a curse. We’re cursed. Carolina wants her to leave. Go away . . . go away . . . She’s at a funeral again. Jimmy is dead now. The springs . . . underground caverns . . . dynamite. An explosion . . . it opened up a cavern and the water moved underground. Disappeared. Jimmy went with it. Dead. He’s dead. Dead Lights. The Dead Lights come. Every night they come. They’re looking for something. He’s looking for something. Has to find it. Has to find it. Looking for . . . someone . . . It’s his. She’s his. Dead Lights. Dead Lights. He didn’t stay dead. It’s true. It’s true. Everything Ella said. He’s looking for something. Searching. The curse, the fear. He—”

“What’s going on?” Jonathan asked, stepping into the room and scaring Gracie to death. She jumped to her feet with a yelp, yanking her hand out of Michael’s light grasp. The trance he’d been in was broken instantly. He bounded out of the chair, the picture frame he’d held slipping from his hand and falling to the braided rug at his feet. Gracie bent to pick it up, feeling dizzy and frightened.

“What are you doing?” Jonathan asked, staring back and forth between them.

“Talking,” Gracie said, like they hadn’t acted like guilty children. “Did you need something?”

“No. I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just heard you say you were looking for something, and I thought I could help.”

“I appreciate that,” Gracie said, forcing a smile. “But no help needed.”

Beside her, Michael had gone very still. Jonathan eyed him curiously.

“I know a lot about the history here,” he said. “If you’re interested.”

Gracie nodded noncommittally. Michael snatched up his gloves and hurriedly pulled them on.

“Maybe later, Jonathan. Right now I’m a little busy with grandmother’s things.”

He gave the box an surprised look. “She left everything to you?”

There was no censure in his tone, yet there was something sly in the question, like he knew something she didn’t. Maybe he did. Grandma Beck might have bequeathed all her worldly possessions to her caretaker for all Gracie knew. She resented his intrusion, though. She kept her expression blank and gazed steadily back without answering his impertinent question.

“You won’t find what you seek,” Michael said softly.

Gracie wasn’t sure who the statement was directed at, but both she and Jonathan gave him a startled look.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Some things aren’t meant to be found.”

With that, he bowed his head and took a step toward the door.

“Did you learn what you needed to, Michael?” Gracie asked before he stepped through.

“I did.”

She wanted to ask specific questions but not in front of Jonathan, who seemed as astute as stone when it came to the nuance of rejection.

“I need to study some of my documents,” Michael said. “I’ll come find you later.”

“What documents?” Gracie asked.

Michael blushed. “I’m endlessly fascinated by the past, Ms. Beck. I carry a piece of it wherever I go.” He smiled but his kind eyes held concern. He nodded, leaned in, and said in an undertone, “In the Dead Lights.”

She nodded, though she wasn’t sure why. With another courtly bow, he disappeared down the hall.

“He’s a strange one,” Jonathan said.

“He’s a very nice man.”

“No offense intended,” Jonathan said, blushing. “Do you need some help in here?”

“Thank you, no. I think I just need some time alone.”

At last he seemed to take the hint. Nodding, he closed the door behind him and left Gracie alone with her troubled thoughts.

Diablo Springs: Chapter Twenty

Reilly woke up alone. For a moment, he lay in the shadows, vacillating between relief and disappointment. Even when he’d been deep inside Gracie, so caught up in her that he could barely breathe, a voice had been warning him not to get too comfortable. She’d come to her senses and be gone before he knew it.

He just hadn’t realized how soon
soon
would be.

“Fuck,” he whispered, rubbing his hand over the shadow on his jaw. He exhaled heavily and got up, got dressed. In the bathroom, he took a quick shower, hoping that once he washed her scent from his skin, he’d be able to banish her from his head. No surprise it didn’t work. He avoided his own gaze in the mirror as he brushed his teeth, just as he ignored the questions circling in his thoughts.

What did it mean, making love to Gracie? What did he
want
it to mean?

In the hallway, he paused, giving the closed doors a dirty look. The house was so still that he could hear his own heart. Where was Gracie now? In her grandmother’s room? He thought about searching her out, but they’d come together with so much unsaid between—and now, the unsaids had doubled.

His stomach growled. He’d scrounged something to eat this morning, but that seemed like years ago. The hope that the bags he’d seen Bill bring in early held food pulled him downstairs. He hadn’t gone far before a familiar scent made him pause and sniff the air. Roasting beef, fat crackling in the heat, spices baking until they released their perfumes. His mother hadn’t been much of a cook, but she could cook the hell out of a pot roast. He started to follow the smell when the nimble fingers of disquiet traced down his spine, making him pause. Brows pulled tight, he tried to isolate the source of the unease.

Nothing was moving around him, no doors swinging insidiously shut. Yet, it was there, that sense of foreboding. Frowning, he continued down the stairs. The smell was stronger down there. It made sense; he was closer to the kitchen. Only now he noticed something sweet in the aroma, something that didn’t belong.

He paused again on the first floor, trying to place it. Chloe sat at one of the tables, looking old and weathered. She watched him with her dark, knowing eyes.

“You cooking something?” he asked.

She shook her head and pursed her lips.

“Who is?”

“No one.”

He hated that the subdued answer made him feel like ants were crawling over his skin. “You don’t smell that? It’s roast.”

“I smell it.”

A nervous tick twitched her eye, cracking her airtight facade. Surprised at how it shook his composure, Reilly passed her on the way to the kitchen. Though the rest of the house had finally cooled somewhat, it was warm in here, the scent of roasting beef overpowering. Suspiciously, he opened the oven door. No hot blast and thick aroma wafted out. The oven was cold and empty.

There wasn’t a Crock-Pot tucked away on the counter, either. Nothing to explain the mouthwatering scent anywhere.

“Nathan.” Chloe’s voice came from behind him, almost scaring him out of his skin.

His spun to find her standing at his back. “Jesus, quit creeping up on me like that.”

“It started about an hour ago,” she said. “I thought I was the only one who noticed it.”

“This is an old building. Maybe the rain is letting some of its odors out.”

Chloe almost smiled. “You’re quite accomplished at justifying things that can’t be explained.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve had some practice.”

“If you’re hungry, Bill was kind enough to bring back chicken. It’s in the refrigerator.”

“Thanks.”

Reilly opened the fridge and saw a two king-sized buckets filled with fried chicken on the top shelf. He recognized the logo on the side. Diablo Springs was too small for a big chain grocery, but the market down the street had a deli and made great fried chicken. He snagged a piece, grabbed a paper plate and napkin from the holder on the counter, and went out to one of the tables. Chloe trailed him like an annoying toddler at a family reunion.

“May I talk to you for a moment?”

“Is that a rhetorical question or do I have a choice?”

“Are you always so rude when you’re frightened, Nathan?”

“I’m not
frightened
.
And don’t call me Nathan.”

“I’m sorry. I know it bothers you, but when I see you, the name is always in your mind. Did you know that?”

Reilly finished the chicken, wiped his hands and fingers, and leaned back in the chair, resigned to her conversation.

“You hate it because it was your father’s name and you hated him.”

A deck of cards sat in the middle of the table. He reached for it and began to shuffle.

“And now you resent me, because I’ve made you see it.”

Eyes narrowed, he looked up, and his gaze locked with hers. “Chloe, what do you want?”

“I want to know when your brother Matthew began to change.”

She stood poised on the other side of the table, as though she might run if the conversation turned south, which it very well could. She looked frailer than she had just last night. And older. So much older.

“You okay, Chloe?” he asked gently.

She gave him a weak smile. “The last time I was here, I was younger and stronger. I was able to block them out.”

“Them?”

“The voices. Diablo Springs is full of voices, and they all want to be heard.”

He started shuffling again, thinking about that. “You talking to dead people, now?”

“Since I was a little girl and my mother died.”

He stood up and moved to the bar in a futile search for some booze.

“Try the panel against the wall,” Chloe said, pointing.

Reilly moved to the end of the bar and pushed the strip of wall near the corner. He heard a soft
snick
and the panel popped open, revealing a small storage room he’d have never noticed otherwise. Inside, three shelves of dusty bottles stood in wait. Reilly pulled out a bottle of amber twelve-year Macallan scotch and smiled.

“Join me?” he asked Chloe.

“How could I refuse.”

He grabbed two glasses from the kitchen and sat down at the table. After they’d both savored the burn for a moment, Chloe said, “Your brother . . . He wasn’t always such a monster, was he?”

Way to kill the joy.
Sighing, he said, “No.”

“But you never understood what happened to him, did you?”

“I understood fine. Life happened. My dad happened.”

“And when he killed your father . . .”

Reilly downed the rest of his scotch and poured another. His heart was doing a tango in his chest, and his hands felt clammy. Chloe stared back at him nervously, like a rabbit in an open field.

“Matt didn’t kill our dad.”

He heard her swallow, but her words didn’t hold the same sense of fear her expression did. “Covering up for him has always been a way of life for you, Nathan. You lied to protect him, even though he still had blood on his hands.”

“I didn’t always protect him.”

“But you were the good son. Then you were the good brother. Now it’s time to be a good man. Be a hero, Nathan.”

He snorted. “You and Bill been out in the back getting stoned, Chloe?”

She gave him another of those leveling looks. He wanted to stride out of the room. He wanted to get in the Jeep and plow through the river-filled roads until he could go no farther. But he couldn’t make his legs and feet cooperate. Just as she’d made him bite at her bait and come here, she’d hooked him with her leading questions.

“My father was an abuser, too,” she said. She walked over to the picture hanging above the mantel and pointed at it. Each step seemed to cause her pain. How had she aged so much in so little time? Reilly found himself glancing around, looking for Bill. If she keeled over, he wanted Bill around, but for once, Chloe Lamont was alone.

“That is my grandfather,” she said, pointing to a man who stood just at the corner of the picture.

The statement blew every other thought out of Reilly’s head. Her grandfather? Why would Carolina Beck have a picture of
Chloe’s
grandfather hanging in her house? He came to stand beside her, staring at the tidy man in the pinstriped suit standing just shy of the background. His disbelief turned sour as his gaze shifted from the sepia print to the woman beside him.

She watched him as he noted the similarities she shared with the white man in the portrait. The shape of their faces, the small, tucked ears, the pointed chin, the piercing gleam in their eyes.

“He’s my grandfather.” Her voice dipped. “And he is also my father.”

“What?” Reilly asked. “He can’t be both . . .”

But even as he said it, Reilly realized that he was wrong. It was possible that he could be both grandfather and father, it just wasn’t right.

“You ask yourself, how could a man violate his own daughter? The answer is worse than you can imagine. In his mind, my mother was an animal, as was her mother. Animals do not have the rights of parentage. They have no rights at all.”

Reilly didn’t know what to say, but she didn’t seem to expect a response.